Holey Discs & Tiles are our Favorite New Frag Accessory

Ceramic tiles and discs made for growing corals on have been around for ages and they’re one of the staples of a toolbox for handling, managing and making frags. So who knew that we would have such a delighted feeling when we came across ‘Holey’ discs and tiles from Salty Concepts at last weekend’s ReefStock 2020 conference.

There once was a time when having a small frag rack on the bottom of your aquarium or magnetically attached to the glass was the purview of diehard coral hobbyists. But nowadays, with a big percentage of reef hobbyists acquiring their corals as frags, most of which are mounted to a frag plug with a peg on the bottom, it’s safe to say that frag racks are a common accessory of contemporary reef tanks.

With this in mind, if you’ve had coral frags sitting on the rack long enough you’ve inevitably experienced the issue of having corals grow over their disc, and either onto the rack or up and under the disc where the coral growing edge is now in the shade. Historically we’ve had to curate overgrown frags like these, usually by cutting off the peg and then gluing the coral into the display, or re-attaching it to a larger disc or tile.

The more corals you have, the more this overgrown frag condition becomes a problem and a subsequent chore, because it’s hard to give individual attention to dozens or a hundred coral frags on a daily, individual basis. The holey discs and tiles by Salty Concepts are a perfect solution to the issue of corals growing over their frag plug.

These high quality ceramic surfaces come in round and square shapes, in two or three inches across, and we couldn’t have stocked up on enough of these while visiting the Salty Concept booth at ReefStock. We added no fewer than sixty assorted holey discs and tiles to our fragging toolbox because now when we discover an overgrown frag plug among our collection, we only have to set it on top of the holey disc or tile to give the coral more surface to grow on.

The ceramic itself is of very high quality with very nice surface finish, and has none of the imperfections we sometime see with homemade ceramic tiles. The holey discs are roughly $1 each for the larger 3″ diameter/wide discs/tiles, coming in packs of ten, and slightly less for the smaller ones – they’re not listed or itemized on the Salty Concepts website but we’re sure that they can sort you out via email.

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.